WHY THE AMERICANS SHOW MORE
APTITUDE AND TASTE FOR GENERAL IDEAS
THAN THEIR FOREFATHERS, THE ENGLISH

THE deity does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at
one glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed; and
he discerns in each man the resemblances that assimilate him to all his
fellows, and the differences that distinguish him from them. God, therefore,
stands in no need of general ideas; that is to say, he never feels the
necessity of collecting a considerable number of analogous objects under
the same form for greater convenience in thinking.

Such, however, is not the case with man. If the human mind were to attempt
to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual cases before it, the
immensity of detail would soon lead it astray and it would no longer see
anything. In this strait, man has recourse to an imperfect but necessary
expedient, which at the same time assists and demonstrates his weakness.

Having superficially considered a certain number of objects and noticed
their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them apart, and
proceeds onwards.

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency
of the human intellect; for there are in nature no beings exactly alike,
no things precisely identical, no rules indiscriminately and alike applicable
to several objects at once. The chief merit of general ideas is that they
enable the human mind to pass a rapid judgment on a great many objects
at once; but, on the other hand, the notions they convey are never other
than incomplete, and they always cause the mind to lose as much in accuracy
as it gains in comprehensiveness.

As social bodies advance in civilization, they acquire the knowledge
of new facts and they daily lay hold almost unconsciously of some particular
truths. The more truths of this kind a man apprehends, the more general
ideas he is naturally led to conceive.

A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen separately without at
last discovering the common tie that connects them. Several individuals
lead to the notion of the species, several species to that of the genus.
Hence the habit and the taste for general ideas will always be greatest
among a people of ancient culture and extensive knowledge.

But there are other reasons which impel men to generalize their ideas
or which restrain them from doing so.

The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than
the English and entertain a much greater relish for them. This appears
very singular at first, when it is remembered that the two nations have
the same origin, that they lived for centuries under the same laws, and
that they still incessantly interchange their opinions and their manners.
This contrast becomes much more striking still if we fix our eyes on our
own part of the world and compare together the two most enlightened nations
that inhabit it. It would seem as if the mind of the English could tear
itself only reluctantly and painfully away from the observation of particular
facts, to rise from them to their causes, and that it only generalizes
in spite of itself. Among the French, on the contrary, the taste for general
ideas would seem to have grown to so ardent a passion that it must be satisfied
on every occasion. I am informed every morning when I wake that some general
and eternal law has just been discovered which I never heard mentioned
before. There is not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at
discovering truths applicable to a great kingdom and who is not very ill
pleased with himself if he does not succeed in compressing the human race
into the compass of an article.

So great a dissimilarity between two very enlightened nations surprises
me. If I again turn my attention to England and observe the events which
have occurred there in the last half-century, I think I may affirm that
a taste for general ideas increases in that country in proportion as its
ancient constitution is weakened.

The state of civilization is therefore insufficient by itself to explain
what suggests to the human mind the love of general ideas or diverts it
from them.

When the conditions of men are very unequal and the inequalities are
permanent, individual men gradually become so dissimilar that each class
assumes the aspect of a distinct race. Only one of these classes is ever
in view at the same instant; and, losing sight of that general tie which
binds them all within the vast bosom of mankind, the observation invariably
rests, not on man, but on certain men. Those who live in this aristocratic
state of society never, therefore, conceive very general ideas respecting
themselves; and that is enough to imbue them with a habitual distrust of
such ideas and an instinctive aversion for them.

He, on the contrary, who inhabits a democratic country sees around him
on every hand men differing but little from one another; he cannot turn
his mind to any one portion of mankind without expanding and dilating his
thought till it embraces the whole. All the truths that are applicable
to himself appear to him equally and similarly applicable to each of his
fellow citizens and fellow men. Having contracted the habit of generalizing
his ideas in the study which engages him most and interests him most, he
transfers the same habit to all his pursuits; and thus it is that the craving
to discover general laws in everything, to include a great number of objects
under the same formula, and to explain a mass of facts by a single cause
becomes an ardent and sometimes an undiscerning passion in the human mind.

Nothing shows the truth of this proposition more clearly than the opinions
of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and capacious
minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at once so
general and so simple, of the common likeness of men and of the common
birthright of each to freedom; they tried to prove that slavery was in
the order of nature and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything
shows that those of the ancients who had been slaves before they became
free, many of whom have left us excellent writings, themselves regarded
servitude in no other light.

All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the aristocracy of masters,
or at least they saw that aristocracy established and uncontested before
their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself in several directions,
was barred from further progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ
upon earth was required to teach that all the members of the human race
are by nature equal and alike.

In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated,
and weak. The movements of the multitude are not permanently guided by
the will of any individuals; at such times humanity seems always to advance
of itself. In order, therefore, to explain what is passing in the world,
man is driven to seek for some great causes, which, acting in the same
manner on all our fellow creatures, thus induce them all voluntarily to
pursue the same track. This again naturally leads the human mind to conceive
general ideas and superinduces a taste for them.

I have already shown in what way the equality of conditions leads every
man to investigate truth for himself. It may readily be perceived that
a method of this kind must insensibly beget a tendency to general ideas
in the human mind. When I repudiate the traditions of rank, professions,
and birth, when I escape from the authority of example to seek out, by
the single effort of my reason, the path to be followed, I am inclined
to derive the motives of my opinions from human nature itself, and this
leads me necessarily, and almost unconsciously, to adopt a great number
of very general notions.

All that I have here said explains why the English display much less
aptitude and taste for the generalization of ideas than their American
progeny, and still less again than their neighbors the French; and likewise
why the English of the present day display more than their forefathers
did.

The English have long been a very enlightened and A very aristocratic
nation; their enlightened condition urged them constantly to generalize,
and their aristocratic habits confined them to the particular. Hence arose
that philosophy, at once bold and timid, broad and narrow, which has hitherto
prevailed in England and which still obstructs and stagnates so many minds
in that country.

Independently of the causes I have pointed out in what goes before,
others may be discerned less apparent, but no less efficacious, which produce
among almost every democratic people a taste, and frequently a passion,
for general ideas. A distinction must be made between ideas of this kind.
Some of them are the result of slow, minute, and conscientious labor of
the mind, and these extend the sphere of human knowledge; others spring
up at once from the first rapid exercise of the wits and beget none but
very superficial and uncertain notions.

Men who live in ages of equality have a great deal of curiosity and
little leisure; their life is so practical, so confused, so excited, so
active, that but little time remains to them for thought. Such men are
prone to general ideas because they are thereby spared the trouble of studying
particulars; they contain, if I may so speak a great deal in a little compass,
and give, in a little time, a great return. If, then, on a brief and inattentive
investigation, they think they discern a common relation between certain
objects, inquiry is not pushed any further; and without examining in detail
how far these several objects agree or differ, they are hastily arranged
under one formula, in order to pass to another subject.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is
the taste that all men then have for easy success and present enjoyment.
This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in all others.
Most of those who live in a time of equality are full of an ambition equally
alert and indolent: they want to obtain great success immediately, but
they would prefer to avoid great effort. These conflicting tendencies lead
straight to the search for general ideas, by the aid of which they flatter
themselves that they can delineate vast objects with little pains and draw
the attention of the public without much trouble.

And I do not know that they are wrong in thinking so. For their readers
are as much averse to investigating anything to the bottom as they are;
and what is generally sought in the productions of mind is easy pleasure
and information without labor.

If aristocratic nations do not make sufficient use of general ideas,
and frequently treat them with inconsiderate disdain, it is true, on the
other hand, that a democratic people is always ready to carry ideas of
this kind to excess and to espouse them with injudicious warmth.